decline of tanks?

I used to work for Armoured Corp for a while ( for not in) and they feel really naked and open thee days...my two cents on the initial question is that better tanks will replace tanks : ) a mobile ground unit is a long way from being obsoleted...so to counter aerial threats (let's not forget also that a worry for a modern day Tankey is the mobile, shoulder fired anti tank weapon/s) will be greater armour, which doesn't necessarily mean thicker steel either...better situational awareness so threats can e avoided or eliminated before they become a problem...speed, of reaction and of the tank. support in the form of attack helos and anti air ground units to support the Tankey...Tanks in some form are here to stay...manned tanks are on the way out.

 

Looks to me like someone can't tell the difference between DARPA and the Army. I also noted that the picture where they talked about tanks being too big and heavy featured an M109 (a mobile artillery piece not a tank).
Vehicle speed in many cases now is limited by terrain more than by the vehicle propulsion system if you are talking tanks. A better suspension would help but a 100 % improvement would require a suspencison system that was more than 4 times as capable and still wouldn't help all that much in some cases as one needs to be able to see obstacles in time to avoid them.

The army would certainly like to move to lighter tanks but I doubt the systems mentioned are practicle at least in the next 50 years or so as tank replacements.

 

There seems to be a lesson not being learned by DARPA: it is very hard to plan for future conflict as planning has to be based upon assumptions or assessments and such assessments are formed by the current experience of the planners and designers. i.e. The UK and US went into Iraq 2 with (generalising) vehicles designed for use in the Cold War and not for COIN. The vehicles and the concepts worked well when Iraq 2 was a conventional war but became unstuck when the conflict became a COIN effort; Hummers and Land-rovers (and even upgraded Fv432 APC) did not stand up to IEDs and RPGs.
In the UK Army, the Land rovers and FV432 were replaced by vehicles like the Foxhound 4x4 APC - a heavily armoured, V-shaped bellied vehicle with a comprehensive ECM suite, CCTV, stand-off armour, etc. Such a vehicle would not have been thought necessary when, in the 1970s, vehicles like the Bradley and Warrior IFV were designed.
An MBT is still a very useful vehicle provided that it receives regular ECM and sensor upgrades. In terms of ATGM being a threat to MBTs, the Russians have developed Shtora. This system detects when an ATGM laser is pointed at the MBT, slews the turret automatically and fires a main gun round down the missile's laser beam, knocking out the missile launcher. There are some videos on Youtube of Syrian rebels discovering the hard way the effectiveness of the system. MBT are expensive and I hope that their cost does not lead to the view that they are not useful.

 

Well to be fair to DARPA actually developing real vehicles isn't what they are there to do. They are suppose to come up with projects that develope new technoligies by pushing the existing envelopes. They are actually responsible for a number of very important technologies. However in anything like this the success rate is not very high and that's just something one has to accept going in.

 

With regards to those Syrian videos.
A.) The Tanks are not T-90s
B.) The tanks are not equipped with the Shtora-1.

The automatic slewing of the turret is to effectively fire the thermal smoke grenade launchers on the turret to block the target designation laser. The listed angle-of-arrival resolution for the Shtora-1's fine sensor is 3.75 degrees - so, the main gun may or may not be pointed directly at the target.

Still, it doesn't hurt to pop a 125 round just in case.


As to the MBT being "dead", well, this has been claimed many times before, and they are still in the thick of the action. Meanwhile, all of their intended "replacements" have gone the way of the Dodo...ASM Program/Armored Family of Vehicles Program of the 80's/early 90's, and the Future combat Systems of the 2000's.

 

Reagrding the gas...

By the time the Nazis had invented the first practical nerve gases - the British had also weaponised Anthrax and tested it on the island of Guinard - AND had developed the means for bulk delivery across Germany by Lancaster....and the Germans were let know this via the Swiss.

ALL sides had gas/chemical warfare companies right up behind the frontline in second echelons etc. just in case the enemy used it...but for retaliation asap AND for decontamination.

 

lol..."pop a 125...".

Can we get some range firing / testing videos of high tech ?... Love a good shoot.

 

MBT still have their uses but they are not the end all that they once were. The Shtora keep that tank safe is extremely open ground but put in a region with natural/man made coverage and it would be of little use at all. Need to be pointed out that the Shtora is also only useful against laser guided weapons when only a portion or laser guided, Others use radio, radar and wire guidence meaning the Shtora has no effect against them.

 

Of course there are other APSs that work against those. How well is an open question though.

 

Japanese Special Naval Landing Force wearing gas masks and rubber gloves during a chemical attack near Chapei in the Battle of Shanghai. (1937)

It should also be mentioned that the Nazis were well on their way to mass produce vast stocks of artillery shells, grenades, etc, with the nerve agents Sarin and Tabun.

"In mid-1939, the formula for the agent was passed to the chemical warfare section of the German Army Weapons Office, which ordered that it be brought into mass production for wartime use. A number of pilot plants were built, and a high-production facility was under construction (but was not finished) by the end of World War II. Estimates for total sarin production by Nazi Germany range from 500 kg to 10 tons."

During World War II, as part of the Grün 3 program, a plant for the manufacture of tabun was established at Dyhernfurth (now Brzeg Dolny, Poland), in 1939. Run by Anorgana, GmbH, the plant began production of the substance in 1942. The reason for the delay was the extreme precautions used by the plant. Intermediate products of tabun were corrosive, and had to be contained in quartz or silver-lined vessels. Tabun itself was also highly toxic, and final reactions were conducted behind double glass walls. Large scale manufacturing of the agent resulted in problems with tabun's degradation over time, and only around 12,500 tons of material were manufactured before the plant was seized by the Soviet Army. The plant initially produced shells and aerial bombs using a 95:5 mix of tabun and chlorobenzene, designated "Variant A", and in the latter half of the war switched to "Variant B", an 80:20 mix of tabun and chlorobenzene designed for easier dispersion (and longer shelf life).

Naturally, Prison labour was used for this as well...